The Robinsons are Northern Ireland's first home-grown political scandal

Lack of transparency and accountability, and the moral conduct of those given
charge of the public interest, are at the heart of this ‘Robinson affair’,
says Mick Fealty.

5:27PM GMT 08 Jan 2010

Two years ago Peter Robinson, after a life-time as deputy leader to Ian Paisley, finally got access to the corridors of power in Northern Ireland. Now his political career is in the balance.

The sex is not the story, though that’s what’s drawing in audiences from Skibereen to Siberia. It’s not even the money. It is a weird combination of the two and the loss, in the very public eye, of that unflappable demeanour that has unnerved generations of his political enemies and media interlocutors.

Even if it is found that Peter Robinson is completely exonerated from all wrong-doing, it is the light this story casts upon the Robinsons' lifestyle, and in particular, and this is a very Irish trait, both North and South, their easy relationship with builders and developers.

Meanwhile Stormont has been in flap all week. The conventional wisdom has been that without Robinson “we’re all doomed.” The logic runs that without him as the liberal leader of an illiberal party, nothing can work. The party will fall apart and the process will fall into an abyss. I’m afraid I don’t buy it.

Peter Robinson, the hard man’s hard man, chose to emulate Gerry Adams before Christmas and bare his soul to the cameras. He looked a broken man. It’s not easy for a politician to come back from that place, especially when he has to meet the cold penetrating stare of Adams and McGuinness over the negotiating table.

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This is in fact a coming of age for the Northern Irish settlement. Gone are the days when the UK and Irish governments could or should interfere with local outcomes for the greater good.

It’s our first big political scandal. And it will not be the last. There’s another parked conveniently in the wings for Robinson’s erstwhile rivals Sinn Fein.

More importantly, it has not been about tribal politics. Lack of transparency and accountability, and the moral conduct of those given charge of the public interest, are at the heart of this ‘Robinson affair’.

That may be a hugely significant step for Northern Ireland’s tightly callipered democracy.

With or without him, Robinson’s party now faces a tough general election against two rising threats. The Ulster Unionists and Tories must now fancy their chances of taking both Robinsons’ Westminster seats, where neither seemed attainable before.

And the hard line Jim Allister, slated to run on Paisley’s home ground of North Antrim, could well drive his electoral tanks right up and on to the political lawn of Stormont to present his demands for a more accountable democracy.

Ironicially, Allister’s preferred recipe for a coalition of the willing may prove more popular (and more functional), than the forced cohabitation of the frosty Robinson/McGuinness pact that’s now coming slowly to its tragic end.